


When The Goods Get Together

by killer_quean



Category: 18th & 19th Century CE RPF, 19th Century CE RPF, AUSTEN Jane - Works, Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Gothic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-01
Updated: 2012-05-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 15:36:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/395428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killer_quean/pseuds/killer_quean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isabella Thorpe is in search of a fortune. A dashing stranger has motives of his own. When antiquities, scandals, incendiary letters, and mysterious portraits make their obligatory appearance, Isabella's expertise in a certain literary genre proves most instructive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When The Goods Get Together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prozacpark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prozacpark/gifts).



_And with a dreadful groan, Lady Ethelinda sank lifeless to the ground, horror imprinted upon her visage, which had once shone with the bloom of innocent youth and beauty, as the exulting Duke looked down upon the ruination that his designs had wrought--_

"Awful groan," said Isabella as she reached lazily for another cake.

"You think?" replied Charlotte as she looked up from her manuscript. I rather like 'dreadful.' It's got such a low, chilling, rolling sort of sound."

"Awful," insisted Isabella. "The groan of Lady Ethelinda is not the sound of common suffering. One might simply walk through a swarm of beggars to hear  _dreadful_ groans. But the Lady Ethelinda--natural daughter of the disgraced Cardinal, ward of the Lord Egmont and heiress to his vast fortune, now trapped in a haunted tower at the mercy of the Duke of Clermont and the vengeful spirit of his wife--her situation is one of noble distress, tuned to the very pitch of sensibility in terror. Her groan, my dear Charlotte, must be  _awful._ "

"You are very difficult to resist when you must have your way," remarked Charlotte as she amended the offending word. "Awful it is. Now, have you given any thought to our name?"

As Miss Charlotte King's own novels had been published under the name of Charlotte Dacre, while her poems bore the name of Rosa Matilda, Isabella supposed that Charlotte's insistence on attaching yet another name to their joint endeavour sprung more from a perverse thrill in the invention of names than in any concern for reputation or literary credit. After all, as Isabella had remarked bitterly, the name of Thorpe was hardly so distinguished that it could be tarnished by association with a Minerva Press publication. Still, Charlotte had promised half of the profits, and while novels were hardly a satisfactory source of fortune, the assurance of _some_ future income was enough to placate the milliner, with whom Isabella had some distressingly high bills.

Isabella looked to Charlotte with a wry smile. "Catherine," she said. "It reminds me of lost opportunities."

Charlotte did not understand, but did not mind. "Catherine de la Coeur," she said airily. "Ah, yes--let all the others  _write_ of French countesses. We will  _be_ one! Escaped the guillotine with hours to spare, now living humbly in a London garrett, consoled only by the muse of Romance..."

Isabella nodded. "I'll compose a harrowing preface, assuring the reader that this tale is one born of no idle imagination, but  _real_ horror. Leading, of course, to some patriotic reflections upon true British liberty and the brave campaign against Napoleon, et cetera, et cetera. That ought to please the reviewers." She took another cake.

The cakes were among the many spoils of attending John King's salon the previous evening. Charlotte's father, a discreet arranger of loans to a sort of clientele too distinguished or high-born to be comfortably associated with anyone going by the crude title of "moneylender," presided frequently over salons populated by friends, associates, and clients. The lavish, yet tasteful affairs assured Mr. King's customers that their need of his services by no means endangered their standing in the World. Indeed, as each liberal bowl of punch seemed to whisper, their present situation was but a passing storm, one to be weathered smoothly with the help of Mr King, who wanted nothing more sincerely than to see his dear clients restored once again to the security and fortune he knew they all deserved.

Isabella had in fact first made Charlotte's acquaintance at such a gathering. After her brother had begun to make alarming comments about his gambling debts and jested rather too seriously about becoming a highwayman, Isabella had resigned herself to the disagreeable task of securing his solvency in addition to her own. Once she convinced her brother that transferring his debts to Mr. King was hardly as ignominious as having his scaffold speech anthologized in the  _Ordinary of Newgate's Calendar_ , Isabella arranged a meeting between him and the good Mr. King, pointed him in the vague direction of several heiresses whom she knew to be either stupid or in the care of incompetent guardians, and regarded her sisterly duty as fulfilled. The whole exhausting affair, however, had resulted in an intimacy with Miss King that Isabella regarded with both ambition (as at least some of her father's connections were both well-born  _and_ solvent) and genuine warmth (as Charlotte was a thrilling companion who feared neither scandal nor the fantastic capabilities of her own dark imagination).  


She sometimes wondered what Catherine would think of her present attachment. Sweet Catherine, who remorsefully declared herself cured of the passion for Mrs. Radcliffe--virtuous, upstanding  _Mrs. Radcliffe_ \--while Isabella's dearest friend was now an author ranked as scandalous as Monk Lewis, and thus more so, as she was a woman. (Such were the words of one reviewer, whom Charlotte enjoyed quoting extensively over punch.)

And so, in offering up to Isabella a host of names, conversations, hints, and intimations that all held some hidden seed of good fortune, this past evening's salon brought to mind the happy accidents that had resulted from the first. Perhaps most promising was Isabella's conversation with a young stranger, one who (Charlotte assured her) was  _not_ in need of a loan. His  _personal_ charms, furthermore, needed no assurances to secure Isabella's good opinion. Mr. King had introduced him to the two young ladies as Mr. Thistledown.

As Charlotte scribbled some more  _awful_ adventures for Lady Ethelinda, Isabella ate her cakes and thought over the previous night's exchange. Mr. Thistledown, she had learned, had recently inherited the house and collections of an eccentric bachelor uncle. Naturally curious about both antiquities and inheritances, Isabella had inquired about the particulars of this piece of property. Mr. Thistledown's answer had excited her curiosity: the house was a large one on Lincoln's Inn Fields, and his uncle's collections were extensive (which she took to also mean "expensive."). She needed only to confirm that he was both unmarried and unattached.

During the course of their conversation, she mentioned the names of several persons whom she knew to be of some wealth and importance, bringing them into conversation in such a way as to create the _impression_ that they were somehow connected to her family while taking care not to explicitly state that they were. Her family, as it was, had nothing to offer her in this marketplace, and as such she would use her ingenuity to supply the defect. The name of a Lord Oxenbridge--a man who Mr. King described as odious, but perpetually prepared to spend extravagantly--seemed to pique the curiosity of Mr. Thistledown even more than the others.

Indeed, Isabella was quite satisfied with the fruits of her dissembling when she received an invitation to tea at Lincoln's Inn Fields soon thereafter. She even regarded her strategy as perhaps slightly too successful on the appointed day, when she arrived to discover that she was in fact the only invited guest.

"I presumed that the invitation was from Mrs. Thistledown, or that perhaps there was to be a party of ladies present," said Isabella with the performance of placid gravity she had perfected over many years of negotiations with her brother's creditors.

Mr. Thistledown smiled apologetically as Isabella searched his face for signs of calculation. The sigh he subsequently emitted seemed a true enough expression of melancholy regret. "I am so sorry for the confusion, Miss Thorpe. I'm afraid that Mrs. Thistledown died nearly three years ago. And, as you see, I have not managed to maintain much female society in her absence."

"I am sorry, Mr. Thistledown," replied Isabella as she calculated her strategy in light of this most compelling piece of information. 

"I would, of course, understand if you must decline the invitation," continued Mr. Thistledown. "I suppose I presumed that your current society might render such a meeting permissible and free of any _unwanted_ implications. But I was, of course, mistaken; I fear that without Mary's influence, I am condemned to forget entirely the sorts of decisions that must be made under the wise sway of feminine delicacy."

Isabella was fairly certain she heard a hint of nervous falsehood in his last statement, though she deemed the sentence preceding it a tolerably good attempt at tactfully informing Isabella that her friend's intimate attachment to a certain Mr. Byrne (the married editor of the  _Morning Post_ , which also happened to be the source of "Charlotte Dacre's" most consistently positive reviews) was both known generally and known to him. Isabella was neither shocked nor insulted. Charlotte had decided long ago that her credit in the world was not going to be built on virtue, as her talents lay elsewhere, and Isabella had always thought her decision an eminently reasonable one. Indeed, it was one that Isabella had come to adopt as well. 

If one read only a certain sort of novel, she thought to herself, one might think that every young woman who entered into the sort of carnal-financial arrangement that did  _not_ involve a marriage license had always been, and always would be, doomed to abandonment, destitution, and an untimely end in a Magdalen-House. But Isabella was personally acquainted with several counterexamples, including one who had enjoyed the fruits of her strategems for many decades, and was now rich and splendid in her healthy old age. Mr. Thistledown, it now appeared, was not to be approached as a paragon of virtue. Very well. Isabella, who had never understood the attractions of a Charles Grandison, read the sort of novels that were rather more instructive for her current situation, the sort that taught young ladies to bolt their doors, beware the counsel of monks, and always remember a way out of the castle. Isabella noted the location of the low front windows, smiled sweetly, took Mr Thistledown's hand, and followed him further inside. 

They proceeded through a grand library and then into a curious warren of small chambers, each filled from floor to ceiling with fragments of statues, mosaics, and urns. Stone eyes seemed to regard Isabella as she passed through each gallery, whose walls were barely visible beneath the crowded profusion of stone faces and hands, turned watchfully in every direction and exhibiting every posture of classical beauty. 

"My uncle, you can see, was quite a collector," remarked Mr. Thistledown.

"I try to imagine for myself how old these statues really are, but I can never quite grasp it," said Isabella. 

"Perhaps, then, you will appreciate the parlour," answered Mr. Thistledown. "Most guests, I confess, say they find it too gloomy."

Isabella smiled. "Gloom has never deterred me, Mr. Thistledown, from the appreciation of beauty."

As they entered the parlour, Isabella understood immediately what he had meant. The walls were as crowded as the others she had seen, but instead of classical antiquities, this room was filled with Gothick curiosities: weeping saints, stained-glass windows, iron screens, snakes and skulls carved into cold stone and dark, brooding wood. They sat at a heavy, sepulchral table and a maid brought in their tea. The maid, Isabella noted with satisfaction, was young and ordinary-looking enough--not the type, she decided, to work as an accomplice in a wicked plot to imprison young ladies in catacombs or the like. 

"Mr. Thistledown," she said, "the astonishing conformity of this parlour to my particular literary interests is both charming and unsettling. I take it you have been speaking of me with Miss King?"

Mr. Thistledown smiled. "Indeed, Miss Thorpe, you have once again seen through my feeble plots."

"All will be forgiven," she replied, "if you reveal what Miss King has said about me. Not that I suspect a dear friend of slander, of course--I simply wish to know what you know so that I may preserve my chances of continuing a conversation without undue repetition  _or_ embarrassment." Isabella embellished her request with the smallest hint of a sparkling laugh, glazing with an appearance of easy spontaneity her concern that Charlotte may have revealed some detail to contradict her inflated account of her family's wealth and connections. Some revision to the story, she thought, may prove necessary. 

"She had only praise for her friend's personal and literary accomplishments," responded Mr. Thistledown with a kindly laugh. "Though she would not reveal the name under which you jointly write, nor would she illuminate under which circumstances you had quit Bath, and so your history remains as mysterious--though of course as unblemished--as that of the heroine of any romance." 

It appeared that Isabella's suspicions were correct. Charlotte must have said something to provoke Mr. Thistledown's doubt about her connections, which he was now attempting to draw out through an expertly concocted draught of flattery, allusion, and reference to Isabella's most trusted friend. She admired the stratagem, even as she saw its constituent parts interlocking like the exposed gears of a pocket-watch. She met it with a charming smile.

"You needn't have consulted Charlotte when I can tell you my reasons quite plainly: the Season had ended, and the amusements of Bath can only hold one's attention for so long. Indeed, Lady Oxenbridge repeats such a sentiment within a week of her arrival every year, yet clamors to return as soon as the season begins again!" She directed a laugh of warm, yet modest affection across the table. "But for one who claims to lack the insights of female society, you are quite knowledgeable in the realm of romance. I believed that most gentlemen regarded such tales as inferior to the exalted and sober volumes that populate grand libraries such as the one we have just seen."

"Then I invite you to peruse its shelves, Miss Thorpe," he answered. "You will find  _The Romance of the Forest_ and a rather extensive set of gruesome German monstrosities shelved between the  _Histoire des Deux Indes_ and the  _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ ."

"That seems a rather illogical organizational scheme," remarked Isabella with complete sincerity.

Mr. Thistledown thought a moment. "My uncle was indeed eccentric. And yet, I do believe I see a certain wry coherence to the set." He leaned back and paused in what seemed to be genuine thought.

"This house is certainly evidence of your uncle's eccentricity," said Isabella. "But also of remarkable learning and taste. You must illuminate me--what is that?" She pointed to a carved bust that appeared to be the head of a woman, but much of the face was chiseled away. Her hair, rendered beautifully in stone ringlets and curls, remained pristine. 

Mr. Thistledown turned to identify the object of Isabella's curiosity, and Isabella detected a distinct hint of concealed alarm when he saw which statue she indicated. "Ah, that!" he responded with easy charm. "That, Miss Thorpe, was once Mary Magdalen. My uncle told me that she had adorned St. Martin's-in-the-Fields until some Puritan zealots took it upon themselves to rid the country of idolatry during the Civil War. She was rescued from complete destruction by some Duke or another, who held onto the thing secretly until the Restoration, when he began displaying it in his drawing room as a terrible reminder of the consequences of unrest within the body politic or some such platitude, until it eventually made its way to my uncle, who is more taken with its historical interest than its utility as political allegory."

"That's quite a tale," replied Isabella. "Worthy of a romance, I might say." She laughed, but the sentiment was serious. This was the most expansive, colorful narrative she had heard from Mr. Thistledown yet, and she knew the delight of fictional composition when she saw it. This story, she thought, was the veil before the portrait. It only drew attention to the thing it hid. 

She began to ask an innocuous question about the library, but at that moment, the maid appeared. "I'm terribly sorry, sir," she said to Mr. Thistledown, "but Mr. Allen is here to see you. He won't wait, and he says it won't take long." 

"Thank you," replied Mr. Thistledown. "I'll be out presently. And bring some more tea for Miss Thorpe." She nodded and left the room. He turned to Isabella. "Please forgive this rude interruption," he said. "I'm besieged by lawyers at every hour of the day. Unfortunately, my uncle was not the most scrupulous keeper of records, and so the matter of his inheritance has proven somewhat... complicated. But I expect just a few more consultations with the good Mr. Allen will settle the matter, and I can return to blissful ignorance of my new proximity to the Inns at Court." 

Isabella smiled placidly as he left the room. His eagerness to assure her of the security of his inheritance revealed an alarmingly clear perception of her ambitions, as well as a willingness to reveal this perception to her. What could this signify? And what should her next move be? 

When she had heard his footsteps retreat through the narrow galleries, she left her seat, crept across the room, and examined the bust of Mary Magdalen. Mr. Thistledown's story of Puritans and Dukes and the Restoration was very exciting, but it didn't seem quite right. For one, this statue did not look centuries old. The carving on the hair was delicate, precise, pristine. And the chisel marks hardly looked blunted by the passage of time. Mr. Thistledown's story, in fact, did not seem very well-calculated to fit the artifact at all--either he was not nearly as clever as she had suspected or he had been forced to concoct this tale spontaneously, with no time to consider a more convincing alternative. Carefully, she turned the statue around to inspect the back of it, where she found a clear, fresh carving: "MRS THISTLEDOWN. ASD 1801."

She hurried to place the statue back in its original position and backed away from the chiseled countenance, newly sinister in light of this discovery. Suddenly, the door to the parlor began to open. Isabella (who knew better than to _freeze_ in horror) dropped to the floor and began to look very intently at some terracotta tiles. 

As the maid entered with the promised tea, Isabella pretended to notice the interruption for the first time. "I'm sorry," she said, "I appear to have lost a hairpin! I really ought not to fiddle with them the way I do."

"Allow me to help, Miss," said the maid.

Isabella shot her hand under the table, closed her fingers as if around a stray pin, and then reached behind her head to rearrange her curls as she stood. "Thank you, but I've found it," she said with an appreciative smile. "I'll attempt to drink my tea without any further adventures."

Once the maid was safely out of the room, she resolved to investigate the visit of Mr. Allen (if that was indeed his name.) She followed Mr. Thistledown's path through the small galleries and towards the library, where she heard hushed voices. Ducking into an alcove lined with small bronze statues, she listened to what conversation she could without risking exposure.

Mr. Thistledown sounded irritated. "Your allowance is set, Charles," he said. "I cannot increase it without endangering my own investments. I have been more than generous with you, considering the countless times you risked my ruin with your indiscretion!" 

"But my dear," replied the man now known as Charles, "you do not understand the danger I am in."

"I am not your dear," said Mr. Thistledown, "nor was I ever. And I _full well_ understand the danger you are in, perhaps better than you do. Lord Oxenbridge is no longer to be trusted." 

"I cannot believe that!" exclaimed Charles. Lord Oxenbridge, thought Isabella, was of rather more consequence than she had expected. She understood, with some alarm, why Mr. Thistledown had taken such sudden interest in her. 

"You should," said Mr. Thistledown. "I believe that he either sent the letter or is in league with the one who did. I will find out more and alert you presently. But I must beg you--leave the city, go out to your estate, wait for me to instruct you, and do _not_ call here again." 

"One could say that this is _my_ house," said Charles in defeated petulance. It appeared, thought Isabella, that Mr. Thistledown's inheritance problems were more pressing than he had led her to believe. 

"One _will not_ say that," hissed Mr. Thistledown in cold fury. "Remember what I have in my keeping. Remember what I could do. I do not wish to, but remember that I could, and I will." His voice softened. "Charles, you are a fool, but you have given me everything I have. I remember that, too. Every day. I will protect our arrangement, as I have always done, but you must trust me. Now go." 

Isabella realized with panic that the conversation was ending, and that she had very little time to return to the parlour. She attempted to look calm as she sat with her tea and tried to decode what she had just heard. Who was Charles? What were his claims to the house? What was the "arrangement" Mr. Thistledown spoke of, and exactly how sodomitical was it? Most importantly for Isabella, what had Lord Oxenbridge done, and what did Mr. Thistledown believe she knew? 

"Forgive me, Miss Thorpe," said Mr. Thistledown with remarkably easy cheerfulness. "Lawyers are most voluble when they are faced with legal complexities, and they do not always understand that we pay them not for an education in the mysteries of law, but rather for the privilege of remaining ignorant. I hope it has not been too dull for you."

"Oh no, not at all," replied Isabella with a smile. "This room has provided me with much literary inspiration, and I was quietly contemplating what will happen next in our novel." The Lord Oxenbridge affair, Isabella thought, sounded quite conclusively like blackmail. Did he threaten to reveal an unseemly relationship between the two men? And yet the conversation Isabella had overheard did not _sound_ like a lovers' quarrel; their arrangement seemed rather more complex and unusual than that. 

"And what have you concluded?" asked Mr. Thistledown. The arrangement, Isabella thought with a dull, cold suspicion, must have something to do with the faceless bust of Mrs. Thistledown. 

"If I tell you, you must promise me you will still buy a copy when it is published," she teased. 

"I promise," he said. 

Every word of this conversation, Isabella thought, was a chess-piece in play. If she did not turn her words to her own advantage, they would only serve his. And so as she decided how to answer his question, she calculated a moment, thought of the unlocked windows and the kindly face of the maid, and chose the more dangerous path. 

"I have concluded," said Isabella, "that Lady Ethelinda will awake in the haunted tower, in a room much like this one, filled with strange, antique objects--I'll be sure to credit your uncle's collection in a footnote if you wish. At first, she will believe that the objects surrounding her are arranged according to no order but that of the Duke of Clermont's madness. But when the haunted portrait of the Duke's wife begins to speak, Ethelinda learns that the tower itself contains all she has sought: the secret of the Duchess's death and the exoneration of Ethelinda's father from suspicion of her murder. Ethelinda reveals the truth and ends the guilty Duke's long reign of terror over her family."

He nodded. His face was quite unreadable. Either he understood her allegory all too well, or he was genuinely unskilled at this sort of literary understanding. Or perhaps her tale was not as well-constructed as she had thought. She wished she could consult Charlotte on that account. 

Isabella prepared to speak again. A heroine, she thought to herself, must always choose to enter the catacombs or the castle or the sealed chamber with open eyes, a weapon, and an unflinching interest in the truth. "I have not yet decided how it will end," she said. "Will it be revealed that it was the Duke who had threatened to turn the Cardinal over to the law if Ethelinda refused to meet him at the tower? Or will it be that the kindly, generous, dashing Lord Egmont was in fact the one who sent the sinister letter? Who do _you_ think may have sent the letter, Mr. Thistledown?" 

"Miss Thorpe," said Mr. Thistledown with a frustrated sigh, "I am quite exhausted with the oblique threats and baroque hints that have begun to permeate my life of late. I will now speak plainly, as I regret not beginning to do before now. I believe that my family is in danger of blackmail, and perhaps utter ruin. I believed at first that you were in a position to help me, but as I have begun to suspect that you may well stand to profit from my ruin, I must inform you that I am quite able to defend myself and punish those who seek to rob me of a livelihood--indeed, a _life_ \--that I have won at great cost." 

Isabella was quite shocked by this sudden change in register. Indeed, she had wished to provoke some outburst much like this one, and yet he seemed to have given in too easily. He was clearly not speaking as plainly as he claimed. And yet she must act as if he were. "I know," she replied, "and I came to warn you. But I must know more if I am to help. What does he threaten to reveal?"

"You know very well, Miss Thorpe," replied Mr. Thistledown, "that no answer to your question could serve either of us, as I have no assurance that my information is safe with you, and you have no assurance that I will tell you the truth."

"That is wisely said," replied Isabella. 

"However, if you seek to prove your trustworthiness, then tell me if you believe I may expect help from Lord Oxenbridge in this matter." This was somewhat mysterious. Surely Mr. Thistledown suspected her involvement in Lord Oxenbridge's plot--why would he attempt to convince her that he did not suspect Lord Oxenbridge at all? If she were in his position, she thought, she might attempt to lead Lord Oxenbridge (through an unwitting intermediary such as herself) to believe that she did not suspect him at all, as such a hint may well serve to inflame his hubris and thus inhibit his caution. Perhaps the safest option, she concluded, would be to make her usefulness and intelligence seem to diminish, as she had begun to suspect that the plot at hand was rather more murderous than those she would prefer to be involved in. 

"This matter is somewhat delicate," said Isabella, "but I am afraid that I am rather more estranged from Lord Oxenbridge than I had implied. Due to some financial disputes between him and my father, he has entirely disowned my brother and me. While I hope to one day regain his affections, I fear that unless my father abandons some of his stubbornness and pride, such a reconciliation is currently impossible."

"You mean you hope to regain a chance at his inheritance?" asked Mr. Thistledown rather coldly.

"A woman cannot live on novels alone," shot back Isabella. She immediately regretted her temper as she realized belatedly that her heated eruption had supplied exactly the information that Mr. Thistledown had sought. "I am sorry," she replied with the appearance of meek contrition. "I assure you, I have no interest in your family's ruin. I heard rumors, hints--that is all they were. I fear I have inflated my knowledge of the entire situation, and perhaps it is best that I leave."

"No!" cried Mr. Thistledown with a vehemence that alarmed Isabella. "I do not understand your insinuations, and I believe you know much more than you have revealed. I cannot allow you to leave until--"

"You cannot _allow_ me to leave?" asked Isabella. "Mr. Thistledown, you will not dictate my movements or threaten me with _imprisonment_ in your home! I will go now, and if you attempt to threaten me again, I will begin to hint to the right people, at the right time, that perhaps one might want to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of Mary Thistledown!" Isabella eyed one of the heavier, sharper bronze statues. She probably should not have mentioned his wife until _after_ she had left, she realized, but it was deeply satisfying to end her righteous speech on that note. Mr. Thistledown, however, did not respond with anger, or terror, or any sort of passion at all. Instead, he looked astonished, then sat down quietly at the table. 

"You are right, Miss Thorpe," he said very quietly. "That was utterly unjust. Forgive me. If I am to lose my liberty, my home, and my fortune, then I would rather lose it to _you_ than to a sneering, triumphant Lord Oxenbridge." Isabella was quite speechless, mostly flattered, and only slightly unsettled. Mr. Thistledown continued. "First, I assure you that Mary Thistledown was not murdered. She is not, in fact, dead." While this was somewhat of a relief, Isabella did not look much more favourably upon husbands who kept a wife hidden away in a country house or (heaven forbid) an attic. Mr. Thistledown rang for the maid. When she appeared, he asked her to bring the portrait from the study. 

"You are correct, Mr. Thistledown," said Isabella, "that I would not have consented to follow you into this study, or indeed to any other part of the house that remains unfamiliar." 

"You're a clever reader of romances," he replied. "I would expect no less."

The maid reappeared with a portrait of a beautiful young woman with the inscription "Mary Crawford Thistledown." Isabella looked at the portrait. At first, she did not understand what the portrait was meant to reveal, but suddenly, she looked at Mr. Thistledown and exclaimed, "It's you!"

Mr. Thistledown--or rather, thought Isabella--Mrs. Thistledown nodded. "I am Mary Thistledown," she said. 

"And your husband," asked Isabella. "Is _he_ dead, then?" 

"No," replied Mary. "He was just here under the name of John Allen, as he has lived these past three years."

"Of course," exclaimed Isabella. "Your 'arrangement,' the threat of blackmail--I understand it now!"

Mary smiled in genuine admiration. "Of course you listened to our conversation. I should have expected that. But I'm not sure you understand _everything_ just yet. I married Charles in a fit of much the same emotion you expressed when you assured me that one cannot live on novels alone. I had lost one prospect and hope of most others due to the folly of a careless brother--"

"A situation I understand all too well," remarked Isabella.

"Indeed. There are far too many men with more power than sense," replied Mary. "Charles, however, was available to me because his fortune came saddled with a rather notorious moral character, which repelled _one_ set of ladies because it offended their sense of virtue and repelled the _other_ set because his family was continually discovering his affairs and threatening to cut him off from his fortune."

"They must have been quite punctilious," observed Isabella, "to threaten disinheritance for simply emulating the Prince of Wales."

Mary laughed. "Charles's indiscretions," she replied, "tended to involve young Frenchmen, and so the World was rather less forgiving on multiple counts." 

"I see," replied Isabella. 

"His market value, so to speak, was thus rather low, but he believed that a wife would help improve his reputation, and I know how lucrative a good investment can be, when judiciously managed. We were tolerably happy for quite a while; he was relieved to discover that I regarded our relationship as primarily financial, and I found him a pleasant enough domestic companion. He is a charming, dear man, despite his foolishness. But while I attempted to repair his standing and reputation by the means that were within my reach, I could not keep up with his indiscretions. He had no intelligence for schemes; he could never tell who to trust and who to keep at a distance. We lost alarming amounts of money to blackmail and even more to his gambling debts and bad investments. I told him that he was a Thistledown, and that the heir to one of the wealthiest families in this country could hardly escape public scrutiny. He exclaimed, rather petulantly, that he did not _want_ to be a Thistledown and that all he wanted was to be left alone. And so I had a brilliant idea. I offered him everything he wanted."

"In exchange for his name," said Isabella with admiration. 

"We went to France. We slowly let out news that I had taken ill. We waited several weeks. We sent out increasingly bleak reports of my health until we finally announced my death and burial in Paris. We both returned to England several weeks later: I as Charles Thistledown and he as the newly-insignificant and anonymous John Allen. After several months of deep mourning, in which I crafted the appearance of sincere moral reform, I re-emerged into the World, moved to London, and took control of Charles's fortune. You cannot understand, Isabella, how strange it felt when I first began appearing in parties and parks, in salons and balls, as Mr. Charles Thistledown. I could never relinquish this freedom."

Isabella sat in silence. 

"And so this is our arrangement," Mary continued. "Charles is allotted a generous allowance. He receives his income from me, and I have promised to maintain him for life in exchange for the gift of his name and fortune to me. I have kept several incriminating letters of his, as security. In return, he has the power to reveal, if he chose to, my true identity. And thus we each have within our hands the means of the other's happiness, as well as the other's ruin."

"And you have just placed all of this in _my_ hands," marveled Isabella. "Why?"

"As I said," replied Mary. "If I am to be ruined, I would rather be ruined by you than Lord Oxenbridge. It is true that you may now ruin me, but one as skilled as you in certain _conversational strategies_ may also help me. I do not know what you will choose to do, but I must risk your choice." 

"Indeed, it is what any heroine must do," said Isabella with a smile. "She must risk all to save herself." She thought a moment. "I do not, in fact, know Lord Oxenbridge. That was a lie. My family has no connections to him at all; I simply hinted that we did to give myself, as you say, a higher market value. However, I know John King, and John King knows Lord Oxenbridge's most sordid affairs."

"He knows the affairs of many," replied Mary, "but his business rests upon discretion. I do not believe he can help me here."

"Ah," replied Isabella, "but Charlotte tells me that he despises Lord Oxenbridge, and that they seem to be on opposite sides of a new and rather complex political conspiracy. And so I believe there is much to be leveraged." 

"Are you offering to help me?" asked Mary.

"I am," she said. "Now, and in the future. But, of course, I have my own requests."

"As well you should," replied Mary. "I would be delighted to propose an alliance, and one of friendship as well as mutual interest. It is rare, after all, that I transact with anyone who seems my equal in such endeavours."

"I believe," said Isabella as she calculated a proposal to publish _The Portrait in the Tower_ by subscription, commission a lavish new wardrobe for the coming season, secure a more fashionably located lodging for Charlotte, and pacify her brother with a small but adequate allowance, "that this may be the beginning of a beautiful friendship." 

_The End_

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a (rather pretentious) reference to feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray's meditation on the role of women as the object of exchange in both literal and psychic economies. (I feel I must add the caveat that Irigaray would probably not approve of the values Mary and Isabella bring to their alliance, but her analysis is nonetheless irresistible as a reference, as Austen basically literalizes the dynamic she describes.) 
> 
> Mary Crawford is appearing here from _Mansfield Park_ \- I didn't tag it because that would be a bit of a spoiler, now wouldn't it?
> 
> Charlotte King, aka Charlotte Dacre, aka Rosa Matilda, really was a Gothic novelist, and everything I've written here (her father's profession and social circle, her relationship with Nicholas Byrne, her literary career) is based on her actual life. From the relatively scant biographical information out there, she sounds like an immensely interesting person. 
> 
> Those familiar with it may recognize Mr. Thistledown's house as a version of Sir John Soane's house, which is now one of the coolest little museums in London. 
> 
> Charles Thistledown is fictional, but loosely inspired by the scandalous life of William Beckford. 
> 
> The "ASD" on the bust of Mary Thistledown, by the way, is intended as a cameo appearance by the sculptor Anne Seymour Damer, whose life was extremely interesting in its own right, and who inspired a really wonderful historical novel: Emma Donoghue's _Life Mask._
> 
> In order for things to work with Charlotte Dacre's biography, I must admit that I have fudged chronology by setting the story around 1805, which works for _Northanger Abbey_ (written in 1803, though it wasn't published until 1817), but isn't quite right for _Mansfield Park_ (1814). We'll just pretend that _Mansfield Park_ is set about 15 years in the past, ignore any historical continuity problems this may pose, and leave it at that.
> 
> Finally, my thanks to prozacpark for an excellent prompt--this was great fun to write, so thank you for inspiring it!


End file.
